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Aaron Gingrich

Aaron is a geek who has always had a passion for technology. When not working or writing, he can be found spending time with his family, playing a game, or watching a movie.

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Jul

Rooted HTC EVO 4G Users: Use SetCPU To Extend Battery Life

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, EVO 4G (Supersonic), News, Tips & Tutorials

For many people, the EVO is an excellent phone, but extremely weak battery life is a huge detractor. Now, however, always-helpful user Pingpongboss has posted some instructions over at XDA-Devs for how to use the SetCPU app to significantly increase battery life. How significantly? He estimates that he could get 64 hrs with the screen off on a full charge. Pretty impressive stuff. Before and After graphs:

The key is disabling Perflock – a bit of code by HTC that keeps the CPU running at a set speed, regardless of usage. By disabling this and setting custom profiles, the CPU can underclock when its use is lower.

Jul

Verizon To Early Droid X Recipients: Just Kidding - You Can Activate Your Droid X Now

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Droid X (Shadow), Verizon Wireless

Yesterday, Verizon told the 170 customers who received the Droid X early that they couldn’t fully activate their phones until launch. Looks like they changed their mind, though – a shot of their system shows that as of Friday afternoon, devices can now be fully activated without any issues. A pretty nice move, and one that is sure to keep those lucky customers happy.

[Source: Droid-Life]

Jul

unrEVOked Releases Details On Now-Patched Security Vulnerabilities In EVO, Hero

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, EVO 4G (Supersonic), Hero (Sprint, HeroC), News

Before the EVO launched, Matt Mastracci and the crew at unrevoked announced that the EVO and Hero had a serious security vulnerability. In turn, this made the phones easy to root – but they still recommended that people either hold off on buying the phone unless they were going to root, or an OTA update was released patching the flaws. It looks like the latest OTA did just that, as they’ve released details on their Wiki.

The crew at UR suspects that these vulnerabilities were for debugging, and were never removed before the phone went to manufacture. The first flaw is in a set of code called “Skyagent” (HTC/Sprints name), and is pants-pissingly scary.

Jul

Slow Garminfone Sales Prompt T-Mobile To Lower Price From $199.99 To $129.99

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Garminfone, T-Mobile

T-Mobile has been forced to lower the price of the Garminfone as a result of very weak demand - analyst estimates peg the number sold around 20,000. The phone was priced at $199.99, a price most reviewers agreed was too high for a phone with relatively weak specs:

600 Mhz processor
3.5” screen
3 MP camera
2GB microSD card
Android 1.6 with no word on an upgrade
Focus on navigation capabilities

Those in the market for an Android device were able to either get a more powerful phone for the same price, or an equally capable one for substantially less. Either way, the Garminfone had little in the way of economic appeal.

Jul

HTC Vision Will Have HSPA+, Coming To T-Mobile In September?

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in G2 (Vision), News, T-Mobile

Last Updated: August 27th, 2010

A few days ago, we found a couple of blurrycam pictures of the HTC Vision. Yesterday, a blurrycam shot of T-Mobile’s roadmap leaked, and it shows an HTC Vanguard releasing on September 9. Now, Engadget has word that the HTC Vision is launching in September – the same time the HTC Vanguard is shown launching on T-Mob’s roadmap. The Vision will be T-Mobile’s first HSPA+ phone. (As I’ve mentioned before, HSPA+ is pretty awesomely fast, and expanding like the wind.) The specs are rumored to include a 3.7” screen, slide-out 4 row QWERTY keyboard, Android 2.1 with sense, and a 1 Ghz processor.

Jul

The Sorry State Of Gaming On Android, And How OpenFeint May Help

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Apps/Games, Games, News

It may not seem like it at first, but gaming on Android is pathetic. While Android certainly has its fair share of good games, there is a long way to go before the state of gaming on the platform can be considered healthy. There are probably a few people up in arms over that statement, so let me qualify it:

A few days ago I wrote an article on a Distimo report comparing various app markets. One of the juicy bits of info from the report (that I didn’t cover in my article) was that precisely 0 of the top ten free apps and 0 of the top ten paid apps on Android are games.

Jul

Updated EVO Root Released

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, EVO 4G (Supersonic), News

Well, isn’t this interesting – the latest OTA update for the EVO (which patched the vulnerability that previously enabled root) has been cracked. The interesting part? It uses Adobe’s Flash Config page to gain entry to the system config.

The full instructions aren’t all that tricky, and as we’ve said before, as long as you read the instructions first, you shouldn’t have an issue. If you haven’t rooted before, it’s certainly worth considering. The benefits are numerous, and having rooted a phone for the first time myself just a month ago, I can attest that it’s well worth it.

Jul

Google & Logitech Bringing Android To The Livingroom

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Google TV, Logitech, News, Revue

Last Updated: July 31st, 2011

During Google I/O, Google announced Google TV. Yesterday, the Logitech Revue – the first Google TV box – passed FCC approval, and as usual, the FCC was kind enough to provide some pictures of the unit.

The unit sports some pretty decent specs:

Android 2.1
1.2 Ghz Atom CPU
4 GB Memory
2x HDMI 1.3
2x USB
S/PDIF out
Ethernet (presumably 10/100/1000)
IR headers
802.11n

The Revue plays nice with Logitech Harmony remotes and acts as a WiFi access point for your entertainment devices. It’s designed to unify your entertainment devices – TV, receivers, DVR, etc, and also comes with free 720p video chat software (bring your own webcam, though).

Jul

Developers: Android Market Needs Some Work

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Development, News

The H Open wrote an interesting article on a post from developer Jon Lech Johansen’s blog. Johansen, co-founder and CTO of doubleTwist, had some pretty legitimate complaints about and suggestions for the Android Market. For example:

The Android Market is available in 46 countries; developers can only offer paid apps in 13 of those
Prices for foreign apps are not displayed in a users local currency – they are displayed in the dev’s currency
Developers can’t customize their price by country – they set it in one currency, and it is automatically converted into others at the current exchange rate
Foreign apps can’t be paid for with American Express or billed to your phone plan
No support for in-app changelogs or payments
Google is too hands-off about the market - there are more than a few apps that are blatantly illegal

All in all, they seem like very reasonable complaints to me, and most seem like they would be (comparatively) easy enough to fix.

Jul

ROM Devs Bringing FroYo, 720p Video Recording to HTC Desire

Posted by Aaron Gingrich in Desire (Bravo/BravoC), Development, Froyo 2.2, News

Well, this is pretty exciting. Two ROM developers by the names of Maja and udK over at (where else?) XDA-Devs have ported FroYo to the Desire, and enabled 720p video recording – pretty neat stuff. The ROM (v1.0) isn’t quite ready for mass consumption yet – it’s still in testing (v0.3 is available for now, though). Still, it’s definitely something to look forward to, and we’ll be sure to update everyone once the FroYo/720p ROM is released.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the fact that our phones are great to begin with, and that ROM devs continue to unlock more goodies for them, is just too cool.